The biggest Mistake of My Life

Taking the English class entitled The Short Story at the tender age of 18 was probably the biggest mistake of my life. No make that WAS the biggest mistake in my life, no probably about it. Not that I didn’t at points enjoy the class and at points do well, I mean I got a 93% on my last paper which was really awesome to be honest, but I realize now at the age of 18, I wasn’t ready for a class like that.

I’m still in high school. I’m still learning what’s right and wrong in the world, what’s good and bad, and what my limits are. I’m not a good writer, I know that from the start, yet something compelled me to take a 100 level English class without ever having taken Freshman English. I admit that I enjoyed the class at times. It was a different atmosphere from the normal lecture sort of class. We actually had open discussions about the short stories we would read and we would openly talk about what we thought. My Professor insisted that there was no such thing as a wrong interpretation of the story, and for the longest time, I believed him.

Things were going great at first, but as the class went on I came to realize that I was far too young and far too fragile hearted for such a class. I would read the stories, gather my opinions, and go to class excited about what I had to say. Yet it seemed that everything I had to say about these stories we would read got shot down by my Professor as meaningless and irrelevant. I seemed to be the one who misinterpreted the stories the naïve one who had no idea what she was really talking about.

I’m young. I’m still discovering the world, so being shot down isn’t what I would consider to be exactly pleasant. In fact, most of the time it sent me into a state of complete depression. I felt so dumb all the time. I was afraid to open my mouth in class because I was afraid that I would say something that my Professor disagreed with. For the first time in a college class I was in, I felt young. I still felt like a high school kid trying to fit into a college community. With my calc class I’m at the top of the class, I feel like a college student there. But in my English class, there I felt like a senior in high school. A girl who couldn’t gather her thoughts the right way, the girl who thought that there was a right way to gather thoughts. I felt small, smaller than I had ever felt before, and it was like that every Monday and Tuesday.

It took a toll after sometime and I really couldn’t think for myself. If I did I was wrong and if I didn’t I was safe because I knew that someone else somewhere felt the same way. I look all the stories up online to make sure that my ideas matched someone else’s, and only then did I open my mouth.

That’s why I am having such trouble with my final paper. There’s no help for me out there. I can’t find notes for the story my paper is on out there and we aren’t having a class discussion so I can’t steal anyone else’s ideas.

Basically, I feel like taking that class was the biggest mistake in my young high school career. I wasn’t ready for that world. I wasn’t ready to be thrown into a classroom with adults who knew what they were thinking and who know the world for what it is. I’m too young, and I’m too naïve.

In other news, I have nine pages of my script left to write by Friday. It’s the worst little script that I’ve written and I can’t wait to trash it and move back onto writing my NaNoWriMo which is still only 70,000 words and 93 pages and only about 2/3 the way done. It needs a lot of work and I just can’t wait to get back to it.

Tomorrow is my Senior Presentation which determines if I graduate High School. I’m more stressed out than words can say and I can’t wait to get it out of my way. I spent over an hour today trying to print out my power point because I couldn’t get a printer anywhere to work for me. My mother and I, who used to be really close but hardly get along any longer, are once again at each other’s throats because of this. I went to her office to print my power point but her printer wasn’t working. Thus I called to see if it was something I was doing and she proceeded to yell at me about it so I hung up on her. Okay, so yea, there’s another wonderful example of how I can’t seem to grow up, but that’s that.

Part of me wants to fail tomorrow. Just to fail. I don’t know, it would just ice the top of my wonderful cake so perfectly. I have to write a memo if I pass. I don’t know what the memo has to be about, and I don’t know how to write a memo. I think it’s more effort to pass than it is to just fail and represent some other time. Then again if I fail I have to write a memo too. What’s with the world and memos. Can’t I just write a blog about it instead? Oh wait, we’ve all seen how well I am at that.

Alright, well I was just complaining to my parents how stressed I was so I probably shouldn’t be sitting here writing this blog post. Guess I’ll be heading off to do some scripting before working on my presentation. The end.